After watching “Helvetica,” you’ll never look at the world in the same way again. That’s because you’ll suddenly start noticing what this smart, breezy documentary about the font abundantly illustrates: Helvetica is everywhere.

What keeps this interesting is the eclectic array of designers who show up to argue for and against the font. There is a procession of silver-haired Swiss aesthetes holding forth on behalf of Helvetica’s impeccable negative spaces (the “white space” that occupies the inside of the letter “a” like a hole in a doughnut, for instance), men whose wisdom is challenged by latter-day upstarts and their insouciant “post-modernism.”

Even for someone not fascinated by typography, this sounds like a :

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type.

Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day.